With fraud-prone, ideologically driven interest groups swarming the Census-gathering process, the left is solidifying its chances of a permanent ruling majority. Lax immigration enforcement is the not-so-secret key to the Democrats’ power grab. The Obama administration is all too happy to aid and abet.

At a meeting to mobilize volunteer trainees assisting with the decennial national headcount, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke encouraged the government’s partners to spread the word that privacy rights of Census-takers would not be violated, and that accuracy and fairness would be ensured. Locke assured the activists: “We all recognize what is at stake.”

But do you?

The volunteer groups Locke is entrusting to protect accuracy and fairness include the voter-registration con artists of tax-subsidized ACORN, the amnesty activists of Voto Latino and the labor bosses of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The fate of $300 billion in federal funding — and, most importantly, the apportionment of House seats — rest in their hands.

As for “privacy rights,” it’s not your privacy rights they care about. It’s the privacy rights of millions of illegal aliens, whose advocates have enshrined for them a sacred right never to be questioned about their immigration status.

Obama’s Census partners are using the process to pressure Homeland Security agents to halt interior enforcement efforts and workplace raids so that illegals’ cooperation with the national survey is maximized.

Inclusion of the massive illegal-alien population has resulted in a radical redrawing of the electoral map. The Census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the headcount. More people equals more seats. More illegal immigrants counted equals more power.

This is not hypothetical. The Center for Immigration Studies determined that, in the 2000 election cycle, the presence of noncitizens (including illegals, temporary visitors and green-card holders) caused nine seats in the House to switch hands.

As the think tank’s analysis reported: California added six seats it would not have had otherwise. Texas, New York and Florida each gained a seat. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each lost a seat. Montana, Kentucky and Utah each failed to secure a seat they would otherwise have gained.

Translation: Open borders have profound consequences. They don’t end with congressional apportionment. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations.

Under the Carter administration, the men and women who enforce our immigration laws were ordered not to do their jobs during the Census count. Of course, non-enforcement was the unspoken policy during the Bush administration. Bipartisan policy, in other words, was to put political interests above security interests and leave No Illegal Alien Left Behind.

The Obama Department of Homeland Security is already continuing the tradition — reversing the work of investigative agents who have uncovered massive document fraud at illegal-alien worksites, and cutting immigration and customs enforcement operations at the knees.

During the Bush administration, groups such as ACORN received millions in subsidies. The pro-amnesty faction of the GOP pandered to unions such as the SEIU and ethnic lobbying groups such as Voto Latino seeking to boost their membership rolls.

Now Republicans can only stand by helplessly while the political opponents they helped fund use the census to wipe them off the electoral map. You reap what you sow.